Ian McLean Spokesperson for the Green Party

It is time we stopped treating senior managers as treasures who need incomes far above the cost of living in New Zealand, and our workers as commodities who are paid barely enough to get by.

Here is one cause of high power prices – the enormous cost of senior executives and governance.

Might River Power, now owned by the Government and 105,587 others, is a case in point. A recent financial report lists four of its people earn more than $500,000, including the CEO, who gets paid more than $1.3 million. Twelve people earn $300,000-$500,000; 27 are on $200,000-$300,000; 55 are on $150,000-$200,000; and 213 are on $100,000-$150,000. The total salary bill for the 309 people, each earning more than $100,000, is about $48 million.

These people are the managers. They do not fix generators, or come to your house to read a meter, or draw up the plans for the next power plant. They do routinely drive expensive vehicles; and occasionally attend expensive conferences, all at additional cost.

In addition, nine directors together accepted $785,000 in 2012/2013. Apparently, their workload is too high because they have requested an additional $85,000 for another director. All of them sit on multiple boards and presumably receive similar payments for governance activities elsewhere. More importantly, those other directorships mean they commit only a proportion of their time to MRP.

The lowest paid director received $71,767 in 2012/2013, which is a lot more than the median national full-time working wage of $43,888 reported for 2012/2013.

One hesitates to imagine the KiwiSaver bill for MRP, but the contribution made for the CEO is about $28,000 per year.

MRP is not an especially large company, but apparently needs six managers, who earn the same or more than the Prime Minister; and a governance group costing almost $1 million.